Ozonetel to raise funds, eyes 10-fold revenue growth

Cloud services company Ozonetel is eyeing Centre’s rural BPO incentive scheme as a business driver for the Internet-based telephony services and is in discussions to raise fund from strategic investors for expansion which could help it grow its revenue 10-fold by 2016-17.Muntazir Abbas | Updated: June 15, 2015, 18:49 IST

up servers in IndiaNEW DELHI: Cloud services company Ozonetel is eyeing Centre's rural BPO incentive scheme as a business driver for the Internet-based telephony services and is in discussions to raise fund from strategic investors for expansion which could help it grow its revenue 10-fold by 2016-17.

"We are aiming to achieve a target of Rs 250 crores and setting up 10 additional points of presence across secondary cities by FY 2017," Ozonetel Founder & CEO CSN Murthy told ET, adding that the company is in talks with 'strategic investors' to raise money. The company earned Rs 25 crore in revenue in 2014-15 fiscal.

The company plans to use the funds for expansion, including overseas. It had earlier raised an undisclosed amount in funding from a group of angel investors based out of Singapore, besides co-founder of Indiamart Dinesh Agarwal who has also invested in Clickindia and Biosense.

As an entrepreneur with close to 20 years of experience across telecom, networking and embedded systems, Murthy founded Ozonetel in 2007. He started his first US-based venture Intoto in 1997 which was acquired by Freescale Semiconductor in 2008.

The Hyderabad-based company feels that cloud-driven solutions would help government to fulfill its ambition to set up call centers in tier-II and tier-III cities through its Rs 500-crore incentive program that could create 1.5 lakh indirect jobs.

Internet-based call centres, the company said, would tremendously save on expenses related to onsite technology purchase, IT team hire and real estate, which would eventually help the government's vision to set up BPOs in smaller towns.

BPO centres can be started in rural areas where basic Internet connectivity is available and that too without capex such as hardware and software expenditure and does not require a server room. Companies can start operations with two or three agents and that can be scaled up, depending upon business growth, Murthy said.

The government, with its rural BPO scheme, expects that that big e-commerce companies and non-profit organizations operating without government assistance would be benefited.

The Centre, under the scheme plans to give 50% of capital expenditure incurred, or Rs 1 lakh per seat, whichever is lesser as a part of government's digital inclusion program.

The scheme is operational till March 31, 2017 and may benefit close to 5 lakh people, according to government estimates.

"We are working in tandem with Digital India that requires higher Internet penetration, more services being delivered online and the influx of Internet of Things," Murthy added